Posts Tagged ‘Green Party’

David Clendon and Kennedy Graham last night attempted to force Metiria Turei’s resignation as female co-leader of the Green Party by saying they would quit if she didn’t, and their bluff has been called. James Shaw has since addressed the issue, and confirmed that he will be seeking to have them both removed from the Green Caucus, (for actions bringing the party into disrepute- as I have said elsewhere, Green MPs aren’t supposed to engineer leadership spills, and the party actually takes good behaviour rather seriously) although he will most likely not seek to remove them as MPs and replace them given how little time is left in this sitting of Parliament.

What this means in practice is that they will be removed from the Green Party List for the coming election, likely confirming Hayley Holt and Teal Crossen1 as MPs if the party holds ground on its average performance in polls, and possibly even Teanu Tuiono and Leilani Tamu as well, if it achieves its maximum bound to date. These are all excellent candidates who deserved to be further up the list, so in terms of political impact, it would be like Clare Curran doing the same thing in the Labour Party2. Teall can easily fill Kennedy Graham’s shoes in the Green caucus, so all they need to do is get sixteen seats (2 more) to make sure they’ve got someone with comparable mana to speak on climate issues and negotiations. I see this as the most likely interna cause of movement in upcoming polling of Green Party support, (continued coverage of Metiria may cause movement, but if anything it’s likely to increase support to the Greens, and a resurgence of Labour support may tempt some soft Greens support away in the polls) but I don’t know if we’ll actually see any dips because of this.

To clarify what’s going on here a little now that things are clearer, their objection was apparently related to Turei’s having been signed up in the wrong electorate and her refusal to resign after a weeks-long media beat up that has refused to dent Party support, not simply to her admission about her actions while on a benefit, as they were part of the decision to tell that story publicly, and that decision was made with consensus within the Green caucus. (ie. everyone agreed to support the decision) How one reconciles that initial decision with creating a perception of instability for the Greens with this late resignation is something I personally find baffling, but apparently they think there is some world in which that makes sense, and they are taking a principled stand by saying it’s wrong to withold information from the government, even though Metiria has very publicly admitted the very same thing to the media several times.

This strikes me as a rather good example of making a mountain out of a molehill. These were actions that, while technically a crime and rather stupid, came before she became an MP, and that two successive Prime Ministers haven’t been punished for performing because it’s the long-standing policy of the Electoral commission that you live where you bloody well say you do, so long as you can answer mail there. Nobody was actually taking seriously the possibility of dissension within Caucus until these two went to the media, and it doesn’t seem like they had actually made the leadership team adequately aware of their concerns, as nobody seems to have been aware that they weren’t fully onside.

These are people who served our country well as MPs to date, both performing well above average, but if they can’t stand by someone whose personal story has finally given us a real and honest conversation about poverty and the welfare system in New Zealand, then they needed to go, especially if they can’t respect the way that things are done within the Green Party, and can’t have an open and honest conversation about their problems. Metiria won’t resign unless she believes that she’s done her dash, Greens don’t do leadership coups or engineering resignations, and it’s appropriate for both men to not only stand down from the campaign, but be ejected from Caucus and even to potentially be kicked out of the party altogether given their breach of normal process.

Metiria Turei announced today that she does not intend to resign as Green Party Co-Leader, but that she would deliberately rule herself out for ministerial positions due to media scrutiny. It’s good to hear the first part, and sad to hear the second part, although it seems a sensible measure given how much the media are focusing on playing the person not the ball on this particular issue. It would make no sense for Turei to go, (in fact, the Party is pretty enthused with the fact that she was willing to put herself out there like this, and would probably back her even if it had cost the Greens politically to do so) and it would undermine Ardern’s position by painting the entire left bloc as unstable. It’s got to be a very hard time for Turei right now, as journalists have clearly been paying stark attention to her past in a way that they haven’t to say, John Key and Bill Englishwhen they both did the same thing in being registered to vote in electorates they didn’t or claimed not to live in, or Todd Barclay, who actually did something straightforwardly unethical and tried to cover it up, rather than merely doing something illegal and admitting to it.

Ardern is setting herself up as being brutally honest and transparent by admitting she would have insisted on not giving a Ministerial Warrant for Turei even if she didn’t volunteer not to ask for one. I’m not sure that admitting that fact would have been my first instinct, (I think there’s a balance to be had between distancing yourself from something that technically is a fraud1, but also not actively letting the media hype this story up more by failing to support your coalition partner) but then again, I’m not in Labour and have different political instincts. I can certainly accept that Labour was never going to rally behind Metiria even with just the first admission let alone the latter one, but it would have been nice to see a bit more of a supportive tone, at least.

What this really seems to be about is that there’s one standard for women who were fighting their way out of poverty and another for rich people who know they won’t really get called to account for their own personal histories so long as everyone involved keeps quiet. While I normally think of voting-related crimes as very serious, I also am on the record as thinking electorates are anachronisms and need to go, so I don’t particularly care if someone registers in the wrong electorate, at least so long as we’re not all dogpiling into Ōhāriu, Epsom, and Te Tai Tokerau. I super-duper double-dragon don’t care when it’s to vote for a candidate that’s obviously not going to win, like every single McGillicudy Serious candidate in 1993, including Turei herself.

We will see if these extra revelations actually hurt. I think it’s unlikely to make a difference with voters, especially as Metiria has been more than willing to front up on this, (she had literally gotten away with it on both counts before her admission) and neither are things that will strike most Green voters as particularly wrong, especially given Metiria’s willingness to take personal responsibility on this matter, not only in promising to repay the money and co-operating with the investigation, but also in ruling out the possibility of personally working to reform the welfare system as Minister. While some will say a person of integrity would never have concealed the truth in the first place, I actually think it takes more integrity and honesty to do the right thing after you’ve done something that’s questionable in the first place.

I also think that some of the people worked up about these issues don’t understand that actually Metiria was on the losing side of an ongoing class war in New Zealand, and that there was no way for her to live her life successfully. She could either have suffered, or have cheated, and neither choice was really right in a moral sense. It was better that she got paid a livable amount and transitioned to a stable career than that she end up not getting what she and her child needed to survive out of the welfare system. They like that there are other complications going on with Metiria’s life at the time, because it allows them to distract themselves from the reality that benefits in New Zealand aren’t really livable.

It’s easy to be honest and transparent if there’s nothing to call you on. We’ll see if New Zealand agrees soon, (I wouldn’t be surprised if it continues to be polarising, or if there’s a mild price to pay to the revelation that she committed electoral fraud as well when she was a young woman) but we’re going to have to get used to the fact that in a high-information environment, a lot of little things that people of Gen X and younger generations did as youngsters are going to be out there, and we’re just going to have to relax and accept that you don’t have to be perfect to be a leader. In fact, it’s much better for leaders to be aware of just how frail the human condition can be.

Laila has excellent credibility with the Left in general and working people in particular, and her selection as leader was basically the reason the Internet Party enjoyed any legitimacy at all, pre-Mana alliance or post-.1 It wasn’t exactly a great move for her reputation in retrospect due to how successful the Right were in associating Mana and the Internet Party with Kim Dotcom due to his donation, but it does make clear that she has a lot of mana with the left.

Prior to Sue Moroney taking over the issue, Laila was the original champion of paid parental leave in Parliament, (she successfully pushed for 12 weeks) has been a friend to the union movement and a vocal critic of neoliberal policies ever since Rogernomics, and quit as a Labour member to join the NewLabour Party and thereby eventually the Alliance, which as its name suggests, was an electoral alliance of radical left parties, such as the Greens, (temporarily) Mana Motuhake, NewLabour, and the Democrats for Social Credit. After her election in ’96, she has served as Minister of Women’s affairs and associate Minister of Labour and commerce, fighting hard for much of the pro-worker legislation that occurred prior to collapse of the Alliance as an effective political vehicle. She has also served as a strategist for the Green Party, so this is a woman who has literally been prominent in every significant left-wing political movement since the 80s, and would provide credibility to the notion that Labour is positioning itself as a senior coalition partner for the Greens, as Ms. Harré is still to a degree part of the Green whānau, and having her at the table for that discussion could legitimately make it easier for both sides.

If Andrew Little wants to run a big-tent campaign that targets both the Labour left and Middle New Zealand, or even if he is going for a left-wing Labour campaign that targets demotivated voters, (ie. “the missing million” strategy) Laila is an excellent candidate who he should be placing high up his list, as she is persuasive to both groups2. (given her crowning achievements have mostly been around securing pay and benefits for workers, she has a lot of pull with left-leaning centrists) He should even be considering how quickly he can move her to the front bench, I would argue. While she’s not new to politics, she is part of the populist change Labour could represent in 2017, and she deserves a winnable electorate or list position when compared to some of the less inspiring electorate MPs, and even a couple of the senior List MPs that snuck in with the 2014 election. (Compare and contrast Laila to Mallard or Ardern, for instance, both of whom were given very winnable list and electorate positions. Then compare with her to some of Labour’s less stellar candidates like say, Clare Curran, and I think an objective observer can agree that Laila deserves to be on or near the front bench)

Laila would make an excellent Minister for Women, or a great head of MBIE, or even both, whether or not Labour intend to split MBIE again3 into Labour and Business ministries. While normally I would be promoting a Green candidate for most ministerial positions if Labour can win in 2017, I can’t really see anyone more qualified to advocate for women, and there is simply no way a party branded as “Labour” is going to even consider handing over the ministry dedicated to working people to any other party in more than an associate role. Little should be seriously considering not only his current shadow cabinet, but how the people on his list and winning electorate selection could contribute to a possible cabinet in 2017 if he is taking his job as Bill English’s opposite seriously, and Laila is an excellent way to give himself more options in both the Labour and Ministry for Women areas.